David Frum is Troubled

This hilarious post, in which the War Party’s erstwhile gatekeeper frets about the significance of Rand Paul’s landslide primary victory for those concerned to defend fiscal irresponsibility and completely insane foreign policy agendas “strong national defense and rational conservative politics”, is bound to warm your heart. My favorite bit comes at the end:

How is it that the GOP has lost its antibodies against a candidate like Rand Paul? In the past few months, we have seen GOP conservatives rally against Utah Sen. Bob Bennett. There has been no similar rallying against Rand Paul: no ads by well-funded out-of-state groups. Some senior Republicans, like former VP Dick Cheney, indicated a preference for opponent Trey Grayson. But despite Paul’s self-presentation as “anti-establishment,” the D.C. conservative establishment by and large made its peace with him. It is this acquiescence – even more than Paul’s own nomination – that is the most ominous news from tonight’s vote.

Ahh, yes. Frum remembers how it was done in the old days, though unfortunately for his sake the targets of movement conservative purges are at least as likely to be faux-prophetic “moderates” as critics of the surveillance state and irresponsible foreign wars. Voter priorities seem to have shifted a bit, and it turns out that that boot doesn’t feel so comfortable when you’re not the one doing the kicking.

I’m not much of a fan of the Tea Party so far, but give us a few more Rand Pauls and that might start to change.

The time was when someone espousing Rand Paul’s views would be pilloried and attacked by mainstream conservatives with even greater intensity after a strong electoral showing. The difference in treatment this time has to do with the fact that Paul will be just one Senator among forty-odd Republicans, and so his primary win doesn’t frighten his critics nearly as much as it would if he were to mount a credible presidential bid. It could also be that there is a growing recognition on the part of people who tried to defeat Paul that he represents a sizeable part of the GOP in many ways and that they don’t want to be on the wrong side of this constituency.

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In the first paragraph, Frum quotes an old American political hack who accurately describes Frum’s own appearance in American politics:

Did you ever go down to the wharf to see the Staten Island Ferry come in? You ever watch it, and look down in the water at all those chewing-gum wrappers, and the banana peels and the garbage? When the ferryboat comes into the wharf, automatically it pulls all the garbage in too.

That garbage consists of neoconservative (Canadian, for God’s sakes) pseudo-intellectuals. Contrary to what many of my conservative friends say about various members of the Obama administration, Frum is the most offensive man in the world (cue the Dos Equis commercial). This is a foreigner from the most dirigiste Anglophone country in the world who deigns to dictate to actual Americans how to run their lives. He is beneath contempt, and a clear example that such soi disant intellectuals should be treated as the deracinated hollow women that they are.

This is a foreigner from the most dirigiste Anglophone country in the world who deigns to dictate to actual Americans how to run their lives.

What damned right have Americans, of all people, to complain about foreigners tellling them how to live their lives? Your freely elected government has spent most of the last 60 years killing people in other countries in order to ensure they and others live their lives the way Americans think they should.

Let’s put some things into perspective. The reason why there was no “similar [conservative] rallying against Rand Paul” is because Rand Paul was smarter than any of them. He knew what he was up against — a closed Republican primary in a very conventional Republican state — and started producing ads like this:

Frum laments that there were no “well funded out-of-state groups” engaged in attacking Paul. Hello Frum, the only well funded outside groups that exist anymore on the Right are the Tea Party organizations, and they all went for Paul.

Frum is a gasbag who obviously didn’t watch this campaign until it crossed his radar sometime this week.

The big reason for Rand Paul’s victory is because of what he stands for as well. If the man can deliver on balancing the budget, and personal liberties, I think it’s a big hit. People are getting sick of the path we’ve been on for so long. His win is greatly due to people’s interest in the campaign for liberty. The tea partiers are a little wacky granted, but the Paul’s have a great message. It’s when you get into Jesse Ventura and Alex Jones that most people get turned off, but Ron and Rand don’t get into all that. They just talk about fixing the issues.

Hmm…I’m guessing the neoclowns are feeling it’s about time to pack up shop and go back to being Democrats?

Reading Frum’s piece from 2003 really brings back memories. Bear in mind he is quoting these men to point out examples of bad, unpatriotic conservatives:
“Espousing defeatism: Here is Robert Novak again, this time on September 17, 2001, predicting that any campaign in Afghanistan would be a futile slaughter: “The CIA, in its present state, is viewed by its Capitol Hill overseers as incapable of targeting bin Laden. That leads to an irresistible impulse to satisfy Americans by pulverizing Afghanistan.” And here is Patrick Buchanan that same day gloomily asserting that the United States would be as baffled by Osama bin Laden as the British Empire was by George Washington: “We remain unrivaled in material wealth and military dominance, but these are no longer the components of might. . . . Our instinct is the strongman’s impulse: hit back, harder. But like British Lobsterbacks dropped in a colonial wilderness, we don’t know this battle, and the weapons within our reach are blunt.”

Frum is whining because the neocons don’t control the Republican Pary anymore.

I guess Frum didn’t get the memo: Continual war and limited-government simply don’t go together. You can’t have both — and many, if not most Republicans would rather have limited government — unless you are a neocon.

Not to mention “Continual War” isn’t much of a slogan to get elected on these days.

The real revelation of course is his outright admission of how “in a normal year, he’d go on to defeat, and the balance of the force would remain, obi-wan, blah, blah, blah, …” Now that he’s safely running his own starship enterprise, the New Majority, whoops, I mean the Frumhouse or whatever it’s called now, he’s quite a bit more liberated in his honesty about what King David declares proper “conservatism” can be and what it cannot be, isn’t he? No pesky memos or emails from the monitors at NRO or the checksigners at AEI to remind him that conservatism and its legendary many houses are supposed to be the mission here. Why, sometimes when one of those pesky real libertarian conservatives gets through the rope line, it’s not only O.K., it’s a DUTY to hope and wish (and vote, presumably) for the Democrat, ie, for the leftist. (They may be saner on foreign policy, but there is no other kind of donkey left) It’s just right out in the open, nowadays, isn’t it, David? Yet, you insist on insulting everyone’s intelligence in ludicrously holding onto your self-applied identity as a conservative. Makes ya wonder if the miracle had happened in ’08 and RP had gotten the GOP nomination, how many NROers would have been unable to contain themselves, and would have been forced to, with all due sadness and regret, write furious editorials that contained the thankless but necessary task of informing Conservatism USA [TM] how for the first time ever in our 53 year history, we must all vote for the Democrat…..

Or many rooms in the mansion of conservatism I guess was the saying. That the establishment cons now all ignore.

Frum’s conservative mansion, at any rate, is just a big friggin’ tent, filled to capacity with socially liberal, fiscally conservative (ie, by “fiscally conservative”, -the right wing of FDR and Morgenthau’s brains) Harvard law degree holders who discuss how wonderful the world is gonna be when we’re all “voting” on the same ballot, and “All men are created equal” will be printed on the money in our cultureless world.